Camera set to move from 120-year downtown Boulder home

Newspapers moving to more affordable locations part of national trend

Camera staff members, including longtime editors A.A. Paddock and L.C. Paddock, stand in front of their downtown building in 1935.
(Camera Archives)

From left, Camera staff members Charles Butsch, Fannie Snell and Valentine Butsch stand in front of the newspaper s building around 1892. The name of the fourth person is not known. The Camera began operations in downtown Boulder on March 17, 1891.
(Camera Archives)

When the Camera opened up shop at the corner of 11th and Pearl streets in 1891, only a few thousand people lived in Boulder.

Over the next 120 years, the Camera stayed on the same corner -- though the actual building has since been torn down, rebuilt, added onto and remodeled -- witnessing the town's coming of age from its central roost and serving as a hub of civic activity.

Next weekend, the Camera will move from its home -- where it's now the downtown's longest-operating business -- to a new location in a business park in east Boulder.

The Camera's cross-town move is disheartening for some, including a number of longtime employees.

"I'm sorry to see it leave 11th and Pearl," said Laurence Paddock, who was the editor at the Camera from 1960 to 1983, succeeding both his father and his grandfather. "There's a lot of memories there."

Camera property timeline

March 17, 1891: The Camera newspaper begins operations on the first floor of a two-story, 50-by-90-foot building at 11th and Pearl streets in Boulder.

1918: The Camera considers moving to a new location to gain additional space, but the owner of the paper's building excavated and finished a basement as a press room to convince the Camera to stay. The Camera later bought the building.

1963: After years of remodels and additions, the building at 11th and Pearl is demolished and replaced by a new building with two floors and a basement. That structure remains as the eastern part of the present Camera headquarters.

1973: The Camera expands the building with an addition to the west that includes a new pressroom, a mail room and circulation department.

2008: The Camera's owners reveal plans to sell the 11th and Pearl property and the adjacent Walnut Street building.

Aug. 20, 2010: The Camera's buildings sell to Los Angeles-based Karlin Real Estate for $9 million. As a result of the sale, the Camera and sister paper Colorado Daily announce plans to move their operations to 5450 Western Ave.

Source: Camera archives

At the center of it all

Thad Keyes, who worked for the Camera from 1977 to 2001, will remember the newspaper's corner home as a place to watch the town grow by just peering out the window.

"The first thing that comes to mind, for me, is the vantage of the building, which is such a chunk of Boulder history," said Keyes, who as a cub reporter covered the conversion of Pearl Street to a walking mall. "During my spell there, I was at the nexus of watching Boulder move from a pretty typical Western-main-street kind of town to something a little more energetic and highfalutin."

Keyes, who ended his tenure as managing editor, also remembers the times he and his colleagues spent drinking beers and telling journalism war stories at the Pearl Street bars, especially Tom's Tavern, a downtown institution from 1959 to 2007.

Stanley Yuzwiak works on the Camera's new press in 1956.
(Camera Archives)

Former reporter and editor Sue Deans shares similar memories: "Reporters always know a lot about bars," she joked.

Deans said the Camera's busy central location was part of the paper's vitality during her tenure, which began in 1977.

"We were just right in the middle of things all the time -- a block from the courthouse, a block from city hall, a few blocks from the justice center," she said. "Everything was happening right around us."

In the era before e-mail, the Camera was also a revolving door for Boulder's movers and shakers.

"I knew everybody in town because they came in in person -- we didn't have computers," said Terry Harman, a Brooklyn native who ran the front desk at the Camera for more than 40 years, sometimes answering more than 1,400 phone calls a day.

Smaller staff, smaller building

The Camera's departure from downtown follows other newspapers across the country that have left city centers to seek out smaller offices that better fit the size of both their staff and pocketbooks.

"I think it's a small trend," said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute. "As newspapers have gotten so much smaller, their buildings are typically more space than they need. ... When business was strong, part of being a good corporate citizen for a lot of newspapers was being in downtowns. But newspapers have been through some very tough times."

Last year, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution made national news when the paper left Atlanta, relocating to the northern suburb of Dunwoody. Several smaller papers across the country -- in places like New Hampshire and Maine -- also announced plans in 2010 to give up their longtime homes in the center of the towns they serve.

In 2008, the owners of the Camera and sister newspaper Colorado Daily announced plans to sell their downtown Boulder buildings. And last summer, Los Angeles-based Karlin Real Estate bought the properties for $9 million.

"It's not just because the Camera employs a lot of people who spend money downtown," he said, "but because the Camera is Boulder's newspaper. I think it's invaluable for the employees -- the writers and the editors and the photographers -- to physically be downtown. ... When the staff is out in an office park on the east edge of town, you're not plugged into the vibe and the energy. I think there's no way that doesn't have an impact."

The Camera's editor, Kevin Kaufman, and publisher, Al Manzi, have both been steadfast that the Camera's move to 25,000-square foot building at 5450 Western Ave. will not affect the paper's coverage and community involvement.

"The Camera will never change our commitment to 150-plus nonprofits that we work with, our commitment to downtown businesses and our commitment to providing the community with the finest news and information delivered on multiple platforms," Manzi said.

Manzi also emphasized that the decision to move was based on considerations similar to those that Edmonds said many papers are dealing with -- a smaller staff in a large building that no longer houses a printing press.

"It's not about downtown versus not being downtown," he said. "The decision to move had everything to do with the reality of business and real estate."

Still, Manzi said he knows the move will be difficult for some Boulderites.

"The toughest thing, in my opinion, is that the people who walk down the Pearl Street Mall won't see the Camera building any longer," he said. "For longtime residents, that will be a significant change."

The next chapter

Neill Woelk, who left the Camera last year after nearly three decades on the sports desk, said the paper's impending move "really breaks my heart," but he also said the move might also provide the staff with "a little inspiration."

"There's something about being in an old empty building that's not conducive to a great work atmosphere," said Woelk, who's now the editor of the Hermiston Herald in Oregon. "I believe that a move like this -- there's a part of it that may also be some inspiration for the reporters and editors and everybody involved to change a little bit of the way they do things."

Keyes, the former managing editor, agrees that the Camera's move -- while difficult to see -- isn't necessarily a bad thing for the future health of the paper.

"To survive and thrive, papers have been downsizing for many years now," he said. "It's just the changing economics of media, and it has to happen. If the move is part of what it takes for the Camera to remain a really dedicated loyal paper, then so be it."

After years of remodels and additions, the historic building at 11th and Pearl streets was demolished and replaced by this new building with two floors and a basement in 1963. That structure remains as the eastern part of the present Camera headquarters.
( Camera Archives)

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